Secrets of optimising your multilingual content

You work hard to create readable documentation, and translate it for a worldwide audience – but how do you make sure your multilingual content is findable? That’s the problem that Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) helps you solve.

Customers increasingly expect to find information about products in their own language, with a minimum of fuss. But translating your technical content is often only the starting point. Optimising it is an important way to make the customer experience as smooth as possible.

Of course, this can seem a daunting prospect, especially if you have hundreds or thousands of pages of documentation.

In this recent webinar, Matt Jackson, Lingo24’s Head of Internet Marketing, teamed up with PG Bartlett, Senior Vice President of Product Management at Acrolinx aim to simplify the process.

Although it’s geared to technical content, much of their advice applies to multilingual SEO in general.

They kick off with the obvious question: why would you care about improving the findability optimize technical content?

PG said: “We had a customer who asked: ‘Why are we getting so many calls to our support line for information that’s readily available on our website? Maybe it’s not as findable as it should be.’”

After optimising their web pages, they saw the number of visits double, while calls dropped by a third. This has a big impact on the customer experience , improving satisfaction – and potentially helping with customer retention.

PG and Matt share easy, step-by-step tips, including how to determine the best keywords (whatever the language!) They also look at the best free tools to use, and pitfalls of relying on traditional approaches for keyword translation – and the five key aspects for online success in other languages.

They also answer questions, such as how to choose a content management system, and the best way of writing English language content that’s easy and cost-effective to translate.

Christian Arno is founder and CEO of Lingo24. He started the company in 2001 after graduating from Oxford University with a degree in languages. He has won numerous awards including HSBC Business Thinking and International Trade Awards (2010), and TAUS Excellence Award (2012) for innovative technology. He contributes to leading industry publications and has been featured on the BBC, in the Financial Times and other media around the world.